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^f;e gaticrit's §iil(.ot antr its §ecbi0ii 



DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED IN AUSTIN-STREET CHURCH, CAMBRIDGEPORT, 
AND IN HARVARD CHURCH, CHARLESTOVVN, 



On Sunday, Nov. 13, 1864; 



Bemg Uje Suntjag foIIoSuing tfje PrestlJEntial lElection. 



BY GEORGE E. ELLIS. 



BOSTON: 
WILLIAM V. SPENCER, 

131, Washington Street. 

1864. 



iAn Mution's ilVallot auiD its Decision 



DISCOURSE 



DKLIVEKEI) IN AUSTIN-STREET CHURCH, CAMBRIDGEPOKT 
AND IN HARVARD CHURCH, CHARLESTOWN, 



On Sunday, Nov. V6, 18(54-; 



Being Uj£ Suntjau fallatomg tijc 13r£0tt)ential lElcrtion. 



BY GEORGE E; ELLIS. 



BOSTON: ■ 

WILLIAM V. S P E N C E K, 

131, ^Vashington Street. 

1864. 



Z^^C/^^-'^' 



^■ 






DISCOURSE.' 



Acts i. 24, 26 : " And they praj-ed and said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts 
of all men, shew whether of these two thou hast chosen. . . . And they gave 
forth their lots." 

There is a striking contrast between two scenes presented to 
us in Gospel history, in the record of both of which we read 
of the casting-of-lots. There is all possible 'difference be- 
tween the two applications or meanings of that same phrase 
in the two incidents. In the one case, an issue was staked 
on what is called " blind chance ; " in the other, on a deliber- 
ately solemn expression of a devoutly guided will in forming 
a judgment. The Roman soldiers, the mechanical officials 
at the Saviour's cross, when that tragedy was over, " cast lots " 
for his garment. The eleven apostles, purposing to fill one 
vacancy in their former fellowship, to preserve the national, 
traditional sanctity and associations with the number " twelve," 
gave forth their lots. 

In both cases, so far as was visible to the eye, the method of 
decision was the same. The word "lot" is suggestive to us 
of an appeal to chance. To cast a lot, to throw, to toss, to 
stake a venture on the die, are all tokens that men commit 
to the decision of hap what they will not dispose by intel- 
ligence or choice, or the decision of the higher Will. Any 
tool or implement or test will serve for that use. But when, 
instead of the word " lot," we use the word "ballot," we begin 
to discern a difference; and the difference mounts and strength- 
ens, till all thought of an appeal to chance leaves our minds, 
the more we interpose of human preference, purpose, or will. 
The rude soldiers on Calvary were entitled to the spoils of 

* Reprinted from the " Monthly Religions Magazine." 
1 



4 THE NATION S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION 

their victim. Some of the lesser ones they could distribute. 
The seamless robe, the most coveted, could not be divided, 
They put to trial in their own way a familiar hazard in their 
own game of life, when they tossed the sticks or the dice to 
decide which of them should ^ain the prize. It would ill- 
become the winner, if he should wear it. All chance prizes 
are apt to suggest incongruity in their use. 

We can hardly call the other scene a trial by lot. There 
were no dice there. Chance was excluded from the appeal ; 
and a wise, discerning, and guiding Power above was asked to 
overrule the decision, not on a throw or by a count, but in the 
hearts of human arbiters. The eleven apostles selected by 
name two men standing nearest their own special fellowship, 
and both alike fulfilling the specific requirements of the case, 
both alike qualified, both unobjectionable, for exactly the same 
work and service. They bowed in prayer for God's best guid- 
ance in rebuking private partialities, and suggesting any 
ground, were it but the slightest, for preference. And then, 
after bowing before God, they signified their choice. For any 
thing we know, the result of the ballot was perfect unanim- 
ity. Such may be the difference between the lot and the 
ballot. The intervention of the human choice and will is one 
element of the difference ; the recognition of the divine over- 
sight is another. 

What is the significance of that trial and decision by 
the ballot which has just been made by our citizens counted 
by millions ? Would that we could pronounce it to be a 
complete and infallible decision, on the part of every indi- 
vidual on either side in it, between absolute right and wrong ; 
between full wisdom and blind folly ; between sure good 
and the sum of evils ! It would be a convenience, if, in any 
human controversy or contest, a dividing line were manifestly 
drawn so straight and sharp and deep, between the conflict- 
ing elements which are ever warring in this world with their 
respective champions. But common experience, to say noth- 
in"- of charity, forbids us to look in human affairs for such an 
anticipation of the judgment. Honest and high-souled pa- 
triots and Christian men were found on both sides of this 



THE NATION S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION. 5 

party-issue. Its own complications, and the known qualities 
of human nature, not only prove, but account for, the fact, 
that the individual men of the gaining and the losing side 
are not to be classified by the distinction of righteous or un- 
righteous, wise or foolish, in their characters and afHas. One 
who sincerely so believes, however, may modestly venture 
the avowal of his belief, that the result of the great balloting 
would not have been different, if some shadowy warden of 
the polls had overmastered the voting so that all the wise and 
good and righteous had actually voted on one side. But again : 
we discard the imputation and the claim which would go with 
such a pretence as a matter of fact. Let there be not only 
magnanimity, but fair, right admission in the case. Let not 
the driving-out of what we call one evil spii'it bring in 
seven others. Let us soothe the irritations of the strife 
among ourselves, and give over opprobrious names, and pre- 
vent the suppuration of wounds which may all heal with an 
unimpaired vigor for the whole body. The honored Chief 
Magistrate, to whom accrues so high a tribute from the decis- 
ion, has set a beautiful example of graceful and kindly recog- 
nition of right purposes and honest aims in those who did 
not vote for him. So effective has been that token of a 
right spirit in him, that not a few who are the subjects of it 
would be glad now to give him the votes which they cast 
against him. 

But though a balloting among men on great political 
or party issues does not sharply and completely divide 
between the champions of wisdom and folly, of good and 
evil, it does engage and put to trial all the mixed and con- 
flicting measures of those warring elements which are found 
in each individual man who takes part in it. To one 
who can read human nature thoroughly and deeply, how 
easy the solution of marvels and proclivities and variances 
which to most of us are so baffling ! Men make up their 
minds, they say : they form their opinions : they mature their 
judgments : and then they pronounce, and act accordingly. 
There are but few citizen voters who would not resent a 
denial of this claim on their part. And yet to how many 



6 THE nation's ballot AND ITS DECISION. 

abatements and qualifications is it justly subject ! The most 
that it can be made to mean is, that a voter, through force of 
some overbalancing influence, motive, or reason, decides on 
which of two sides he will dispose himself. The character 
of the reason, bias, or purpose which controls his decision, 
may range over the whole scale of good and evil. You only 
multiply units when you count a million. A ballot on a 
party-issue, whether cast by tens or millions of men, is but 
a larger testing and exhibition of all the complicated elements 
of human nature in each single man. A party, however 
large, however exalted its professions, must regard itself as 
falling, proportionately, just so far short of absolute freedom 
from bias or error, and of absolute infallibility of judgment 
and principle, as would the best man composing it in his own 
private capacity. Our whole race has not a vice or a virtue, 
a passion or an infirmity, a quality of wisdom or of folly, of 
which each man has not in himself the germ in some stage of 
its growth and fruitage. Still we understand better the mixed 
elements and biasses of will and judgment, and the abate- 
ments and excesses of the good and the evil of human na- 
ture, when brought out in the crowd, than when manifested 
in an individual. 

Yet there is a significance, a moral of an intelligible 
character, in the result of that huge ballot. Whatever 
there was at stake in the trial transfers all its import to 
measure that meaning of the decision as on one side, rather 
than the other, of the alternative at issue. The voice of 
the nation, expressing its will and purpose, approves, and 
therefore proposes to pursue resolutely and at all costs, the 
military policy which it has already tried for four years. 
The people must be understood as ratifying, not repenting of, 
not even murmuring over, or asking to reconsider, a course 
of which it has had fair experience. The majority is a de- 
cisive one ; and under its expressive verdict, if the question 
were tried again this week, it would doubtless be yet larger : 
so re-assuring is the influence of such a decision on those who 
make it, while it also has a converting power on many of 
those who withstood it ! 



THE NATION S BALLOT AND ITS DECISION. T 

If ever we ascribe to the verdict of men, counted one by- 
one to millions, a significance bearing, if not on the absolute 
right, yet at least on their convictions of what is right, we 
can scarce deny or depreciate the weight of that decision 
now. Those who, after experience of war, resolve to con- 
tinue it, must, at least, be regarded as more resolute than 
those who begin a war. All means and efforts were engaged 
to make the decision an intelligent one, and to bring the 
elements which entered into it within the comprehension of 
ordinary minds. The burden which the nation is bearing, 
and that which it would need to assume, with the sure ratio 
of its increase and severity, with the consequent vexations 
and risks, were candidly disclosed. The resources, also, of 
the nation were deliberately estimated on the basis of its 
reserved energies, as in part a matter of statistics, and, for 
the rest, of reasonable hypothesis. Deference was paid to 
the high standard of common intelligence among the native- 
born voters, by laying before them, in carefully prepared 
documents, the materials for unbiassed judgment. The 
usual artifices of a political campaign were subjected to all 
the restraints and cautionary measures which are consistent 
with liberty for both parties. Even the popular harangues 
were, in general, of a high tone ; and only a very few of the 
public speakers were so far misled by their own ill temper or 
their selfish aims as to leave recorded against them legitimate 
reasons, if not for political, at least for social, proscription. 
The opposition did good service towards insuring the same 
intelligence of decision, by presenting all the cogent reasons, 
all the actual obstacles, as well as all the bugbear and ficti- 
tious apprehensions, Avhich might warrant its own measures, 
or qualify the convictions, the purposes, or the zeal of the 
party in power. There was less than ever before of that 
inconsistency between our professed reliance upon the intel- 
ligence of the masses, and the tricks and cajoleries, the 
trumpery catch-words and silly devices which address them- 
selves to those who help to fill the net, without being 
conscious that their destined use is that of bait. If, as is 
affirmed by those who should know, some hundreds of hired 



8 THE nation's ballot AND ITS DECISION. 

torch-bearers appeared, for the same fee, in the city proces- 
sions of both parties, they will have occasion only to remember 
which party happened to have the pleasanter weather for 
its night-tramp, and the more rallying creature-comforts for 
protection against a cold. Those who, in reviewing the 
struggle, are curious to pursue it into its private and personal 
partisanships, may employ their ingenuity, with or without 
their charity, in accounting for the position of this man or 
that, by a smouldering animosity, or a laid-up grudge from 
former antagonisms. Nor will individual instances be lack- 
ing, to be discussed between the generous and the suspicious, 
of conversions and avowed convictions and new positions 
attached to the names of public men. 

Such of us as are happily exempted by profession or 
principle or temperament from the more exciting and pas- 
sionate experiences connected with such a struggle, may find 
in it rich materials for quiet thoughtfulness and for profound 
speculation. On the whole, the occasion was one which we 
all feel and know is burdened with momentous and near 
consequences. As it Avill enter into history, who of us Avould 
not be glad, if, in the calm and security of some other scene 
or age, he might read the matured issues of the nation's 
balloting and its decision ? 

From the clustering homes of our northern and western 
lands, in crowded cities, snug towns, and scattered rural 
dwellings, have come those whose ballots have wrought this 
decision. Many of them were cast after prayers as sincere 
as those which preceded the choice of an apostle. Those 
ballots were dropped by hands which have been wrung in 
woe over the desolations of the war made in those thousand 
homes. The populous metropolis of the land, the centre of 
all disturbing and dangerous influences, cast a ballot in which 
some forty thousand majority were counted by the opposition, 
— coming from foreigners by birth, — as yet unskilled in our 
highest patriotism, and from exiles, and sympathizers with 
sedition, resident there. But that local majority was more 
than neutralized outside the capital, in the rural regions of 
the State, by its native-born and educated inhabitants. The 



THE nation's ballot AND ITS DECISION. 9 

voice of the people is not the voice of God ; but only the 
voice of God can silence it. And only his will in manifest 
demonstration can thwart its purpose. Such is the signif- 
icance of this ballot. It is not the triumph of a divine 
decree, but it is the ratifying of an Intelligent resolution of 

man. 

There was an alternative for choice, — a positive two- 
sided issue submitted to the people for their ballot. That 
alternative on the one side was simple ; on the other, vague 
and complicated. On the one side it was this : Shall we 
pursue our mlHtary policy unchanged in method or design 
or leadership, with the one sole purpose of crushing rebellion, 
and saving and vindicating the nation I On the other side, 
the alternative, as presented by a party composed of hete- 
rogeneous and discordant elements, was not simple, but 
compound, confusing, not definable, except by many distinc- 
tions and qualifications. To some who espoused the op- 
position, its aim was hardly distinguishable, except as to 
leadership, from that which the Government was pursuing, 
and the people have ratified. But a leading motive or pur- 
pose scarcely consists with joint or distracting motives or 
even wishes not approving its own direct and sole design. 
And so an opposition which professed only a desire for some 
change in the conduct of the war entered into fellowship 
with those who pronounced the war a crime and a failure, 
hopeless, and therefore to be given over by other efforts for 
peace. 

So incongruous and discordant were the elements of the 
party in opposition, that, in the event of its political success, 
it would have found within its own ranks and councils, 
under some modifications Indeed, though essentially the same 
irreconcilable alms and .purposes, and the same differences 
of opinion as to methods and means which constituted the 
grounds of its antagonism to the party in power, — now no 
longer a party. Precisely the same strife which has been 
convulsing the politics of the nation would have been trans- 
ferred in a more condensed, but by no means a more tracta- 
ble, or a less distracting or alarming form, into the sharper 



10 THE nation's ballot AND ITS DECISION 

discords of a cabinet and an Administration dictated to by 
those who might claim to have given them the power. 
There was really no issue between the two parties, the sub- 
stance of which was not manifest in the incorporated, but 
not assimilated, elements of the party in opposition. Of what 
sort the precipitate from such a combination -would have been, 
even those who compounded it could not reasonably predict. 
The decision of the nation has adopted the simpler alternative 
of the issue. 

And yet, though the resolve to pursue the war unchanged 
in councils and in leadership sounds and is simple in its 
statement, it is one to which many discordant elements con- 
tribute, and which is full of perplexities and anxieties in its 
details. It avows what we purpose to do, and then it throws 
us back on our ways and means. Its purpose is to put the 
maintenance of our American National unity foremost in 
resolve, and in political and military measures and enterprises. 
The whole soil of the United States of North America is 
regarded as held in fee by the nation ; and all who live on 
its territory are held in allegiance to its laws and edicts. 
Under certain just restrictions of right policy and humanity, 
the question of territorial integrity and unity takes precedence 
of all others. The purpose is, that the law of the nation 
shall extend over the M'hole of it, whatever may befall the 
inhabitants or the peculiar institutions of any rebellious por- 
tion of it, — town or state, individual or confederacy. If 
people abroad find it difficult to comprehend the idea which 
underlies this resolution, it may be because it is an American 
idea nationalized by the American people. We have all 
learned how dull and slow even our English kinsfolk have 
been to apprehend this idea of ours. They are beginning, 
however, to take it in ; and their learning it now inay save 
them trouble for the future. 

It claims special notice, that, in this stern trial of purely 
American principles on so broad a field and Avith such 
momentous national issues, we should have had a purely 
American Chief Magistrate. Our President is an indigenous 
man, the product of our own soil and circumstances, in a 



THE nation's BALT,0T AND ITS DECISION. 11 

region where the pecuKaritles of place, of hifluences, and 
products are most distinctively characteristic. He is no 
courtier, no scholar, no trained expert in the manners of 
academies or drawing-rooms. His features would baffle the 
moulding skill of classic Grecian art, and perplex the chisel 
of genius, in fashioning their marble counterpart. Marble 
Avould not be the suitable material for their presentment. 
In vain Avould the Roman toga attempt to round into easy 
grace of shape and attitude the angularities of his limbs. 
The canvas which is to be animate with his portrait must be 
content to be excluded from all galleries of beauty. Talley- 
rand would be impressed with the waste rather than with 
the lack of direct self-committal in his plain-spoken words. 
He is, indeed, home-born, home-bred, the product of our 
own soil, and of that, too, beyond the mountain-ridge of the 
primary deposit. The wits and trillers of the press, and many 
silly story-tellers, have shown a poor ingenuity in fabricating 
reports of him and his sayings, designed to heap ridicule on 
him. His lack of the graces and of the polish of artificial 
manners, his plain-spoken ways, and his shrewd aptness in 
blunting impertinent or obtrusive approaches by facetious 
indifference, make him an easy victim for those skilled in 
the little arts of malice and slander. But he has already 
made the mark of character, and won the homage rendered 
to straight-forward, high-toned integrity. The statesmen 
and diplomatists of the old world, after taking time to place 
him and to analyze him, have now discerned the specific 
cast and genus of the man ; and they accord to him an 
honor which State craft and official dignity by no means 
imply, even if they consist with it. History is ransacked 
in vain for a parallel to him, though, in its revolutionary 
annals, it gives us, in its representative characters, many 
striking contrasts to him. Destined, we may Avell believe 
him to be, to a wide and an exalted iame ! A man of a 
godly and revering frame of heart, ruling his own spirit, 
unselfish and faithful towards his fellow-men, pure and 
devoted in ministering the most, conspicuous office of gov- 
ernment on the whole earth, — such he seems thus far to 

2 



12 THE nation's ballot AND ITS DECISION. 

have proved himself. And his trial has been sharp and 
stern. If such as he has been he still shall be, — and there 
is a pledge of prolonged identity in the man, and of perse- 
verance in the style of his virtues, — then, when he becomes 
a character of history, to say nothing of the attractions of 
the picturesque in personal history, or the diagnosis of a 
marked individuality, — will he not stand among the world's 
very greatest and very best ? How men among us with 
human hearts can turn him into a jeer, call him a tyrant, 
malign him as a trimmer or a demagogue, — is not indeed a 
wonder ; for folly in all its shapes is naturalized among us : 
but it is a sad token of the lack of all manly nobleness 
and generous sympathy. What cares and burdens, what 
responsibilities and anxieties, what days and nights are his ! 

But the choice of a leader is not the disposal of the conflict, 
nor the solution of the dread perplexities of our future. 
There is a dim and difficult way before us. The thronging, 
deepening anxieties of the national struggle appal the hearts 
of many ; and only those of lightest hope and weakest judg- 
ment would presume to indicate any near result, or to shape 
its conditions. The future can be cheered or forecast by 
us only through the positive assurances and facts which the 
present gives as encouragement. 

In looking on into the future, and conceiving and labor- 
ing for any prospect or plan for the solution of the mighty 
result, there are two sources or grounds of our wise reli- 
ance : first, a confident hopefulness of a desirable and a 
rewarding issue for the conflict ; and, second, an intelligent 
and bold acknowledgement of the many practical difficulties, 
embarrassments, complications, and tangled conditions of the 
struggle. 

We need first and most the strenjrth and leadinjr of an 
unwavering, full-freighted hope, true confidence, humble, 
thoughtful, chastened, as may be, held under allowances for 
all divine overrullngs of our ignorance or our wishes ; but 
still a confident hope, a conviction, that the dread struggle 
will repay Its cost, and be crowned with a triumphant success. 
Let that hope be seated in our hearts ! It will be to us 



THE nation's ballot AND ITS DECISION. 13 

strength, cheerfulness, solace, and provision under all that 
lies between us and its full fruition. And the past and the 
present will furnish warrants for that hope. AVe have re- 
traced no step, yielded no resolution, depreciated or distrusted 
no motive, which has thus far guided us. The will and pur- 
pose of the people have been declared by ballot. In face of 
all the known and apprehended exactions of the struggle 
projected into the undefined future, under the burden of an 
increasing drain of men and money, of taxation and personal 
sacrifice, the voice of the people is, that the strife against 
rebellion should be vigorously pursued, and that the same 
mind and will and lead which have thus far directed it shall 
retaiu the power, skilled by practice, and approved in resolve 
and aim. A strong and reasonable hope in any enterprise 
which engages the energies of men centres in the conscious- 
ness of ability and purpose within themselves. Have not 
most of us thought and felt, all along the course of this awful 
fraternal strife, that, if we have so great a cause to be saved, 
it must have in itself some self-saving power ; a vitality and 
vigor which will re-enforce us while we are serving it ? ■ There 
must be a virtue, an energy, in our national cause, which has 
a potency in itself, using us as instruments for its success, for 
its triumph. This prompting of patriotism as a spirit lying 
behind and within the inspiration of men and women, not 
only of armies, but of those who fill them and feed them 
and pay them, and minister to their wounded, and honor 
their dead, — this spirit of patriotism is the mightiest weapon 
of war. Like the sun, it feeds its own flames ; and men 
do not see or know how its unwasted supplies are secretly 
renewed. We are often reminded in these peaceful, thriving 
regions, that we do not realize the war. No ; nor do we 
know the resources within us on which we have not yet 
drawn. Our hope has power and grace behind it. 

The question of cost in money, the enormous outlay, the 
heaping debt, will not impair or chill that hope. Putting all 
thought of repudiation or national bankruptcy out of view, 
we can contemplate the possibility, if stern necessity should 
require, that the great majority of those who hold the pecu- 



1-1 THE nation's ballot AND ITS DECISION. 

iiiary national obligations slioiilcl, by voluntary proffer and 
petition to the Government, propose to surrender every 
money-claim for the sake of the country, for the sake of pos- 
terity. And as to men, — men for the camp and field and 
for the ships, — the men stand behind the ballots which rep- 
resent the people's purpose one way, to secure its fulfilment 
in another. 

The second ground of our wise reliance is found in a bold 
and intelligent facing of all the practical difficulties before us. 
They are many and huge ones. It requires courage to face 
them in their dim, bewildering vastness and terror. But it 
would not be wise to attempt to shape them, for they are 
misty at best ; and some of them will never become solid, and 
others of them M'ill vanish. But we must face many of them 
as realities, stern and perilous ; and we must say to our- 
selves, as one by one they take shape, this is to be mastered 
and disposed of. Of one thing we may be certain, as illus- 
trated by personal and universal experience of the relations 
between foreboded and actual evils, that no more dismal 
realities can be visited upon us than those which have 
been made familiar to our apprehensions by the dark predic- 
tions of some among us who have opposed the national 
purpose, or the conduct of the war. Many of us, in the 
exercise of our best intelligence, settled in our minds the 
irrevocable decision, that, as failure would be total and 
permanent ruin to us, all inflictions and calamities short of 
that were to be regarded as conditions for averting it, and 
therefore to be submitted to, without halting or even protest. 
The object which we have in view has steadily become more 
definite, more dear, and more sacred, as effort and sacrifice 
have carried us deeper into its vitalities. Our cause has won 
an element of inexpressible potency for appeal and resolution 
in the precious and endeared offerings made to it. Its 
youngest victims stand as our sagest councillors, the purest 
priests at the nation's altar, the most hopeful prophets of 
sure triumph. The Christian conscience of the people, with- 
out the help of cunning casuistry, but with the full, calm, 
earnest conviction of a heart-purpose, assures us that a grand 



THE nation's ballot AND ITS DECISION. 15 

and holy inspiration of humanity overrules all other motives 
and aims of the war. The majority of our soldiers in 
field and camp, with heads bared, and faces turned heaven- 
ward, may affirm that they are fighting for a cause in which 
their present foes are to have a full share of good with them- 
selves, and that the sum of blessing to each depends upon 
our success. 

Whether this war shall prove, on the nation's part, to have 
been a crime or a righteous enterprise, depends upon what 
is yet to transpire as the Avay and the terms of peace, and 
not upon mere reference to its origin, nor upon its method 
up to this stage of it. If we shall feel bound conscientiously, 
not from necessity, to close it, yielding the point and the 
prize of the Rebellion to those who stirred it, then it is now a 
crime. Our refusal at the first, our delay, our resistance to 
grant what we shall ever be induced to own was a rightful 
demand, have been and are unjustifiable. Measured by 
the scale of loss and woe for which we shall thus be proved 
culpable, our crime will be marked as of daring and awful 
heinousness. 

So far the conscience of the nation is not pricked by re- 
proach or misgiving. Realizing more profoundly and in- 
tensely, as, to our own amazement, we measure the course of 
the war by years, what horrors of scourge and misery it 
brings with it, the moment has not been known when the 
nation's second judgment has doubted whether it were wise 
or right to have entered upon it. 

The whole issue at stake, as it showed its balanced alterna- 
tive to us, when the match burned down to the powder, 
has remained unchanged. It was then, and is now, the alter- 
native of a wrecked and ruined nationality, embracing the 
world's noblest experiment and hope, or of a country sad- 
dened, lacerated, humiliated, but purified and re-instated in 
its lofty distinction, by a struggle which develops and assures 
its true life. The great Teacher spoke one of his truths of 
largest compass and of most profound import in the words : 
" No man can serve two masters." No man can divide the 
allegiance of his heart. Nor can a nation do that. We have 



16 THE nation's ballot AND ITS DECISION. 

tried to do it ; and we failed. The snakes of discord were 
hatched in the very cradle of the nation ; and they were not 
strangled there. Whether the hitman or the reptile antago- 
nist shall retain its life, is the issue which waits decision in 
our civil war. 

It is the greatest of wars, because for the greatest stake that 
was ever at issue in war. It is, in its conduct on this nation's 
part, the most humane war that was ever waged on the 
earth, engaging in us the least of ferocity, of barbarity, of 
reckless and fiendish cruelty, and the most relieved and chas- 
tened by forbearing mercy and thoughtfulness as to every 
needful measure of severity. Traitors and spies and de- 
serters are leniently dealt with. The first and the most 
unpitled victims of all other convulsions and wars, they are 
all but tolerated, not to say, unmolested, among us. Editors 
of newsjDapers, and public plotters and declaimers against 
Government, are allowed a license of free speech and writing ; 
the exceptions to which, in a very few and those not the 
worst cases, are, by the same tolerance of utterance, repre- 
sented as instances of the most tyrannical oppression. The 
prisoners caught from the ranks of the nation's foe are housed 
and fatted, not for the slaughter, but to offset, when the time 
shall come to show them, the cadaverous victims from our 
own households who have been rotting and starving in 
Southern pest-houses. The angels of mercy, laden with alle- 
viating and luxurious gifts gathered from all the household 
cupboards of the land, attend, with equal zeal, upon the 
sufferings of friend and foe. Our people have wrought and 
adorned the largest and richest frame in which the picture of 
the Good Samaritan has been or ever can be set. 

Meanwhile, it is not in human nature to be satisfied under 
such circumstances as are now before us and around us, with- 
out asking questions, and shaping Avishes Into anticipations, 
■ about the future. What can we reasonably look for as the 
solution, the method for disposing of the terrible conflict? 
Our efforts and hopes, taken together, ought to fashion out 
something like expectations. We read the edicts of the 
military leaders, the editorial columns of the newspaper- 



k 



THE nation's ballot AND ITS DECISION. 17 

writers, and the official documents of the political schemers 
in the region of rebellioa. They are full of resolution, of 
defiance, of boastful assurance, of sworn determination never 
to yield the ground on which they have planted themselves. 
Of course, these utterances will be in tone and purport such 
as we find them to be. For from whom do they come ? 
Many superficial or dismayed readers among us peruse these 
utterances of the instigators and master-spirits of the Rebel- 
lion ; and, hastily inferring that they speak the mind and will 
of a whole people, sadly say, " These tokens do not intimate 
any repentance, any sense of failure or discouragement, any 
readiness for conciliation on the part of our foe." Such per- 
sons have merely to put the simple question. From whom 
come these sturdy and defiant boasts and pledges ? They can 
all be traced, as can the first plottings and the dragooning 
initiatives of the Rebellion, to a fellowship of men not exceed- 
ing in number a single score. Of course, they must remain 
committed to a cause, whose disaster is to them absolute 
wreck of all earthly aims, with the blot of eternal infamy on 
their names. So far as human retribution or vengeful pen- 
alty awaits them, the councils and courts of the nation 
will, in all probability, be spared its infliction. It will come 
upon them, in all the severity of which they will be able to 
bear it, from the dupes and victims of their own pitiless am- 
bition and misleading falsehoods. There are those among us 
who say they are waiting for the days of peace, to read what 
they feel most interest in, — the internal secret history of the 
war, in the councils and privacies of the rebels. There will, 
indeed, be startling and confounding disclosures from those 
sources. But beyond all the woes and tragedies which have 
been opened to our knowledge as they transpired, will be 
the harrowing revelations of private, household griefs, of 
dark atrocities, of outrages and brutal inhumanities incident 
to the iron-heeled despotism and barbarous passion by which 
the plotters of the Rebellion have overaM^ed and tyrannized 
over the people whose glorious heritage and birthright they 
have sought to sacrifice. It requires no help from the imagi- 
nation to draw the scenes of agony which have crushed the 



18 THE nation's ballot AND ITS DECISION. 



-y 



hearts, and overborne the patriotism, of hundreds of thousands 
in Southern homes. 

Therefore, the hope of Northern Christian patriots is, 
that the war will find its end in the protest and rising of the 
people in the region of the Rebellion against their own 
leaders. To bring about that righteous result, is the sole 
purpose of the discomfiture, the sufferings, and the defeat 
which we expect our army and navy to inflict on the 
organized forces of the Rebellion. We have assured the 
Southern people that we are their true friends. They will 
believe it when they have stricken their own real enemies. 
That there is, in the heart of our Chief Magistrate, a purpose 
of magnanimous dealing which he evidently finds it hard to 
reserve in announcement till the fit moment for it has come, 
but which will meet the demands of the opportune time, and 
reconcile the strife, who of us doubts ? Shall we not all be 
satisfied at least to have extended the time for the maturing 
of th6 opportunity for such a peace ? 



